Faceless
by Shanti Rosa
Summary: Most of their story is a lie. ArthurxMorgana.


**Author's Note:** Merry Christmas sazisquarepeg! This is for you especially. And no, it isn't incest. :P But it is probably, uh, not what you wanted AT ALL, for which I apologise.

xxx

King Arthur Pendragon stands before the mirror in his bedchamber. The mirror is usually left to rot in its corner, but Queen Guinevere's visit has left him in a contemplative mood. His wife rarely shares a solitary moment with him anymore. Both of them are wrapped up in their separate lives, in war or politics or love. But he can still feel the imprint of her fingertips on his jaw; he can still see her sad smile, the way the sorrow lines at the corners of her mouth deepened as she met his eyes.

"We're growing so old," she said, letting her fingers linger for a moment before lowering them. He felt her regret.

Now, as he stands in front of the mirror he thinks of her face, so much less careworn than his own. Every line on his face, he thinks, every wrinkle or scar signifies something he has done in the world, and something he has left undone. A reign of many mistakes – so many of which will be forgotten. And underneath the blemishes is the same face he has always possessed, with its strong jaw and mouth that twists too easily into smirks and smiles. A boy's face.

Youth is a shameful business. As a young man he exhibited all its worst qualities: self-absorption, self-obsession and a crippling sense of inadequacy that had him practicing his swordsmanship late into the night, his fingers bloodied and the muscles between his shoulders webbed with pain. He was loud and rude and expected perfection from everyone. He wanted to be like his father, and was simultaneously terrified by the prospect. He was willing to die for his country; in fact he came close to it a number of times. He had not yet learnt that living for it would be the hardest thing of all.

He was, in all the ways that mattered, a child. Not so any longer. He is glad for the scars, the blemishes, the wrinkles. He is glad they will not allow him to forget that this glorious kingdom he has built is founded on a bedrock of lies.

Sometimes he hears people talk about Excalibur. _He pulled it free from a bed of stone. It was given to him by a woman made of water, the Lady they called her._ They talk about Guinevere. _The daughter of a King, hidden in the guise of a maid. A slut and a traitor, if he knew what she does behind his back his heart would break…_

And of course they talk about Morgana. _Uther's bastard, of course. Oh, no one said it, but you could tell by the way he treated her –_ Or, _She left Court because she was with child, you know. They say the King is her son's father._

Arguments. Contradictions. Sometimes Morgana is his sister, sometimes not. Sometimes Gwen adores him and sometimes she loathes him. The truth is far simpler and far more complicated than all that. He does not know how Excalibur was wrought, but he knows it was brought to him by Merlin and not by a woman made of water – Merlin drenched from head to feet, a barely restrained grin on his face, his eyes as bright as coins. He knows Gwen is most certainly a Blacksmith's daughter, once a maidservant. A woman who was always more a friend than a lover, who shared his grief when people began to slip out of their lives, one by one. And Morgana…

There are so many lies about Morgana.

Morgana is his enemy – or so the people believe, and so he claims. She calls the boy Mordred her son, and thwarts Arthur whenever she can. The people call her Morgan Le Fay in reverent terms. Some of them pray to her for blessings and sometimes she grants them their wishes because she may loathe _him_ but her heart is wide, wide, wide and she has room for love and hate alike. She is a sorceress. She thinks she would be a better ruler than him and has said so numerous times. She has killed knights and tempted them to sin. She is wicked and fierce and undeniably beautiful, and none of these things at all.

This is the truth about Morgana: She wasn't beautiful until she hit puberty. People used to mistake her for Arthur's squire, which irritated her to no end. Even now when he conjures up her image in his mind the clearest one that comes to mind is that of her at thirteen, long-limbed and gangly with a streak of mud on her nose and fierce eyes. He kissed her for the first time when he was sixteen. She used to snore in her sleep, and only cried when she wanted something (obedience, sex; his heart). She always had to have the last word. She liked the feel of his armor against her cheek when he held her, and knew how to pinch him hard enough to leave bruises. She was fierce in bed and out of it, but when they made love she was _honest_ and alive and demanded the world. She told him she loved him for the first time the night before she left. He still doesn't know if she lied. He doesn't know what she is to him anymore: friend, lover, sister, traitor. Enemy. Ally.

He wears the loss of her on his face regardless, in the shadows around his eyes and the tightness of his jaw. As he looks at his face in the mirror he sees the memory of her there, mingled in with a hundred more. Like all his mistakes, she won't be forgotten.

We're growing old, Guinevere said.

_We're just growing more lost,_ Arthur thinks, and wonders how long it will be before his face has too many sorrows to hold.

Not long, he thinks. Not long.


End file.
